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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26907247">To the Beginning</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaporwaveNico/pseuds/vaporwaveNico'>vaporwaveNico</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Love Live! School Idol Festival (Video Game), Love Live! School Idol Project</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Past Lives, F/F, Headaches &amp; Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, Occult, Stardew Valley - Freeform, Tarot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:48:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,886</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26907247</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaporwaveNico/pseuds/vaporwaveNico</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Eli didn’t know why she had reacted so strongly when Umi had walked into the office, but only that her blood had begun to beat around her ears and that a high-pitched whine began to screech in her head, the beginning of a serious headache.</p><p>-</p><p>Past lives AU. Eli x Kotori</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ayase Eli &amp; Sonoda Umi, Ayase Eli/Minami Kotori</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>To the Beginning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This... is an experiment. I might take this down later and reskin it. IDK. This could arguably be like, an AU of A Glimmer of Sunshine but making an AU out of your own AU is pretty ridiculous...  I don't know what I'm doing.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Eli had a migraine, and it was the new girl’s fault. </p><p>Umi Sonoda hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d asked insightful questions about the procedure, the team, and the project she was to begin working on. Umi was fine looking, Eli supposed, not exactly her type, but fine. Umi didn’t smell bad. Umi didn’t seem off. There was nothing about her to offend Eli.  </p><p>The women had never met before. Umi was a fine, nice young programmer. Eli had no reason to be upset, or worried, or sick, or jealous. There was no reason to have a reaction at all. Eli wasn’t even a programmer. She wrote proposals asking the government for money and for some reason ended up doing human resources along with it. </p><p>Eli massaged the skin under her eyes, her cold fingers making useless motions, fighting the inevitable. She didn’t know why she had reacted so strongly when Umi had walked into the office, but only that her blood had begun to beat around her ears and that a high-pitched whine began to screech in her head, the beginning of a serious headache.</p><p>She texted Kotori to get her a coke on the way home. A regular one, she’d specified. </p><p>Eli only drank non-diet cokes when she had a migraine. Kotori answered back with a sad emoticon. ): <em> Headache again? </em></p><p><em> Yeah. </em> She sighed. Her girlfriend knew her so well. Eli didn’t know what she did to deserve Kotori. Or rather: Eli knew she didn’t deserve Kotori. </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Something stirred with Umi, that she didn’t understand. </p><p>She’d taken the train home with anxiety cleaving into her chest. Nothing had happened. Just a first day at work in a new city. She’d gotten everything done on her to-do list, her team was nice and friendly, and she’d gotten a significant pay raise since her last position. </p><p>And yet the feeling that something was wrong kept nagging Umi. If she’d left something important at the office. She recalled the meditation exercise her therapist had her do last session. Breathe in four breaths. Breathe out six breaths. Breathe in four breaths. Breathe out eight breaths…let your mind follow the movement of your breath. She did this the whole way home, doing her best to shake off… whatever this was. Her ankle hurt. Umi supposed it would rain soon.  </p><p>Her roommates were watching a movie when she’d gotten back to the apartment. Nozomi had huddled herself into a burrito in the newfound autumn air, drinking tea. Honoka was absently playing her bright teal mini-switch while also texting on her phone, and also watching the movie. </p><p>“Hey!” Honoka called out, as soon as Umi had opened the door. “How’d your first day go?” </p><p>Umi stiffened. Did she really want to explain this… lingering anxiety to her old college friends? “It… it was fine.” </p><p>The movie was paused. “Are you sure, Umi?” Nozomi said, lifting her eyes to Umi. “I sense something… different about you today.” </p><p>“Yeah, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” </p><p>A sliver of ice went through Umi’s spine. “A ghost?” </p><p>“It’s an expression. I believe it is common amongst English speakers.” Nozomi laughed. “But yes, I do sense something unusual on you. A lingering… energy. Long since past. But an important one.” </p><p>Umi raised one eyebrow. She knew Nozomi had a professional tarot reading business, as well as doing professional exorcisms and witch work. “Uh huh. How much is that going to cost me?” </p><p>Honoka scowled. “C’mon, you know Nozomi isn’t like that. She read my love fortune for free last night!” </p><p>“Now now, if Umi keeps up her negative vibes, I might start charging her.” </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Kotori was waiting at the coffee table holding a coke and an cold gel-packet, frozen specifically for days like this one. The lights were all dimmed besides her laptop and salt lamp. “Hey.” Despite herself and the building tightness in her forehead, Eli’s eyes swept over Kotori’s body. Clinging floral dress. Long wrapped braid. Flushed dewy cheeks even in the sparse light. Eli tried to guess the product: a blush, a pink highlight, some application of a strange new item she’d never heard of? “You’re an angel.” </p><p>Her girlfriend sat her down and poured her a coke into one of their sea-glass goblets. Kotori’s mouth twisted into an impish smile. Flashing teeth and garish lips. “Is this your housewife fantasy come to life? </p><p>Eli snorted. “In that, my head wouldn’t hurt and I’d have one of those rose quartz strap-ons. And I’d make more money. And we’d live in a charming Russian village and raise goats.” Eli took a long sip of coke. Cold and sweet. A sense of calm filled her: the headache would go away if she kept drinking it. Maybe it was a placebo effect, but the coke <em> would </em> work. She put the compress to her head, covering her eyes.</p><p>“Aww babe, don’t start talking about the strap and get me all excited and bothered when you have a headache.” Kotori purred.</p><p>“You’re in a strange mood. Or. Stranger than normal.” </p><p>Kotori didn’t say anything for a moment. Eli would have looked up to read her expression, but her head hurt too much to remove the ice pack.</p><p>“Kotori?” </p><p>There was a longer pause. </p><hr/><p>Nozomi sat at the kitchen table in silken shawls and a brassiere that made Nozomi’s generous figure all the more ample. Incense was burning on the kitchen counter. Something spicy and floral and a little nefarious. They’d turned the lights off, and had only votive candles for light. She’d laid out several cards on the table.</p><p>Next to Nozomi sat Honoka in the half-broken stool. She who didn’t change out of her sweatpants, and was still texting and playing Stardew Valley at the same time. (She did turn the volume down.) </p><p>“I didn’t ask for a past life reading, Nozomi.” </p><p>Nozomi winked at her. “Oh, but Honoka did.”</p><p>A wind stumbled through the open window - they didn’t want the fire alarms to go off. It would rain that evening. (Umi knew this to be true, because barometric pressure affected joints, and this was not superstition.)   </p><p>“This is stupid. You know I don’t believe in this stuff.”  </p><p>“Imagine what you can put on your dating profile: Pisces sun, leo moon, aquarius venus. Past life: a majestic samurai lady who saved countryside damsels. Soul’s purpose: to find true love.” </p><p>Honoka giggled.</p><p>“I don’t even know what that means, Nozomi.” </p><p>“This is why you have trouble with the ladies, Umi.” Honoka said. “Every girl should know their full birth chart.” </p><p>“You’re both awful. I am a rational, objective person, and I do not want a girlfriend obsessed with astrology. I am selecting these people OUT, not trying to bring them IN.” </p><p>“Yeah yeah whatever.” Nozomi waved a ring-covered hand. “Close your eyes. Imagine yourself in a bright light space.” </p><p>Umi shot a final glare at Nozomi, sighed with an exaggerated exhale, and  closed her eyes. She imagined a space of complete white. </p><p>“Now let the past come in. Rewind your life back. See what has come before, what fruit it has barred.” </p><p>Still imagining complete white, Umi “let the past in.” </p><p>Her ankle began to throb again.</p><p>Umi saw nothing but… normal life. She saw the day rewind: getting off at the train station, meditating while holding onto the pole, catching the train, walking to the station, seeing the lingering blue eyes of the last woman to leave the office…</p><p>Suddenly Umi felt anxious again, as if she could untangle the root of her anxiety to the</p><p>HR woman. The blossom of panic had sprouted from her, the woman in the pencil skirt and uncomfortable looking heels who’d had her sign the retirement fund papers and final official documents.</p><hr/><p>Eli’s brain clutched together, tightening, spasming. Eli inhaled. She didn’t want to cry out. She was stronger than that. </p><p>“I am in a strange mood,” Kotori said. “I’m very… existential. I keep thinking about you and me and everything… how we met. How I even came here. But I’m also wound up. Like I can’t focus on anything, leaping from idea to idea. Touch to touch. I want you. I want us.”  </p><p>Eli smiled through the pain. “You still think about the women’s choir?” </p><p>“All the time.” Kotori said, in a whisper. “It was like I’d come… home. Like I’d known you all my life and I’d been born to dress you up in gilded costumes.” </p><p>“I… felt the same. Like we were meant to be… a part of each other’s lives.” Eli moved blindly towards Kotori, pressing into her soft body. “Like we were meant to perform with each other.” Her head pounded. There was something else, too, something Eli only ever told Kotori when she was drunk. “But…”</p><p>“What is it?” </p><p>A headache this bad was close enough to being drunk, Eli decided. “It’s… ridiculous.” </p><p>“Oh, this again. Eli. Babe. I’ve told you…” </p><p>“It’s… deep rooted, Kotori. Like there’s this seed ready to bloom into poisonous flowers. Like my venom will overwhelm you one day. Like I’m going to take something precious from you. Someone. And I won’t even feel bad.” </p><p>“Eli, I know you, I know you wouldn’t… I mean, Eli, you don’t even talk like that normally. A beautiful metaphor, but those words aren’t from you. Aren’t yours.” </p><p>Eli sighed. “You asked.” </p><p>“I know. I know. I can imagine…” </p><p>“Yeah. I mean. Don’t you have it, too?” </p><p>“What?” </p><p>“This… hurt, inside. This hurt you don’t understand. The pain of something… Forgotten.” </p><p>Kotori said nothing, but held her hand. “Do you want to go to bed?” </p><p>Eli nodded. “Yeah.” </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Umi opened her eyes. </p><p>“This is dumb.” </p><p>Nozomi frowned but maintained her ridiculous persona. “What is it, my child? Is the spiritual power around you insufficient for your voyage into the holy records of past lives?”</p><p>“I saw a woman. From HR. I met her. Today.” </p><p>Nozomi gave her a quizzical look. “That’s very… interesting. Now let me see what the cards will have to say…”  She turned over the cards. “Hmmm. Seeing a lot of swords. And uh. Wands, I guess? Two reversed queens. How odd.” Nozomi griped and muttered and looked up a few things on her phone for a few moments, and even brought out a book.</p><p>Honoka, who had been in rapt attention before, commented that fishing was lousy in the river and that she wished Maru had an easier schedule to follow. </p><p>It was hard to believe she’d meet these two at a women’s acapella group in college. But despite everything else, they sang like angels, and there was something about them that was comforting. Like she’d known them her whole life. Even if they were both A Lot. </p><p>Nozomi rang a little bell that Umi guessed she had kept somewhere in her luscious veils. “Alright… I think I’ve got it.” </p><p>Umi raised an eyebrow. </p><p>“In a past life, you lived a life of hardship and pain. Despite constant effort, your abilities and achievements were never recognized. You deceived, and were deceived.” </p><p>“This is not being a samurai.” Umi shuddered. “Can you close the window? It’s kind of cold.” </p><p> Honoka got up, switch still in hand, and closed the window. </p><p>“You knew several women, each in a different aspect. There’s all four queens in this reading: you, the reversed queen of swords, a presumed lover, the queen of pentacles. But then…” Nozomi looked uncomfortable. “But then, a reversed wand, and an upright cup.” </p><p>“What… does that mean?” </p><p>“You are an aggressive woman-”</p><p>“I am not aggressive!” </p><p>Honoka snickered. </p><p>“You, the aggressor, the truth finder, and yet you pushed people away with your words. The queen of pentacles, an earthy woman, a loving woman, a one who loves finery and comfort. Your lover. An upright queen of cups, an empathic, intuitive overflowing woman. A woman who… changed things. Shook you up. And the reversed queen of wands - a vengeful, selfish woman, almost a mirror to yourself.” Nozomi paused. “The queen of wands is the woman who killed you, the woman you killed.” </p><p>Umi’s ankle throbbed again. </p><p>There was a long silence. Nozomi’s face looked like a melancholy saint under the candles. Even Honoka seemed somber in the pale glow of her handheld gaming system, for someone Umi knew to be harvesting melons at this very moment. </p><p>“I killed someone?” Umi said at last. </p><p>“Yes. You’re… facing that karma now, I think. That… past tragedy still drips on you.” </p><p>Umi scoffed. “Well. This was fun.” She huffed. “This would be great for parties, Nozomi.”</p><p>Nozomi only smiled. There was a sadness to it. Which was so much worse than if Nozomi had been angry.  </p><p>“Which queen is HR lady, do you think?” Honoka asked. </p><p>“The queen of wands.” Nozomi said. “I sense her energy. I sense the blood.”  </p><p>“You guys are really taking my perfectly normal first day jitters and just… being <em> so </em> dumb about this. I have social anxiety. HR lady is just… <em> scary, </em>okay? I feel like she could snap me in half.” </p><p>“Is she hot?” </p><p>“Honoka!” </p><p>“Is she though?” </p><p>“I…” Umi thought about it. HR lady was classically beautiful. But she wasn’t really Umi’s type. Umi went for a sort of cuter, softer girl. She wanted a girl she could <em>hold. </em>HR lady was like a statue. “She’s fine. I’m sure she has a very wealthy, very ambitious husband.” </p><p>Nozomi gave her a piercing look. “Are you sure?”</p><p>“No, I’m just being- ugh. Whatever. You guys, as I said, are DUMB. I am just ANXIOUS, you WITCH DOCTORS. Nozomi, you owe me a cup of tea. Honoka, you owe me dinner. And a blind date with that girl in your gaming group.” </p><p>Honoka had settled back into the game in earnest, eyes not leaving the screen. “Which one?” </p><p>“The little soft-spoken one. Hanayo?” </p><p>Honoka looked weirdly pleased. “I’ll see what I can do. She’s going for Emily in our game though, though. I’m not sure you’re her type. Maybe you’re like… Penny? Haley?” </p><p>“I don’t know what that means but I hate you.” </p><p>“I love you too, Umi.” </p><hr/><p>Kotori led her into their bedroom, told Eli to get on her stomach. Eli knew what that meant: Kotori would be soon to follow on top of her. With quick clever fingers, Kotori clutched Eli’s neck, shoulders, kneading with soft gestures on the too-tender skin. </p><p>Something unravelled with Eli, loosening and drifting out. “You’re so good at that…” </p><p>“Massage is an important skill for being a housewife.” </p><p>“Kotori…” Eli grunted as Kotori started to press on her mid-back. “Kotori, you’re a blogger. A paid blogger. You have a job. We hire a cleaner. I don’t want to think of you as like… what my mother does for my father. That’s so gross.” </p><p>“Don’t ruin my American 50’s fantasy.” Kotori knelt down and nibbled on her neck, her ear. “Is that what you’re going to take from me, huh?” </p><p>Eli felt a tightness return. A cry choked in her throat. “I’m being serious, Kotori. Really.” </p><p>“Oh, Eli.” Kotori sighed and stopped massaging. “I’m. I’m sorry. I just…”</p><p>“Want to make light of it. So you don’t have to consider it. I know. I… wouldn’t take me seriously either. But. It sits in my stomach. Always waiting.” </p><p>“Is it something you’ve done? Or something you will do?” </p><p>“Done, I think. It’s like… living with this pointless guilt is my punishment. I’m… sorry. I know this is ridiculous. I know I’m pushing you away. I wouldn’t even consider this if it weren’t from the same… spark, or feeling that I got when I first met you. I know you were my angel, but I knew… I had done something terrible as well. That I owed it to you to… make up that grievance.” </p><p>“That’s… not terribly romantic, Eli.” </p><p>Pain clutched her temples. “I’m making up for some… cruel action in a past life and that’s not romantic? Is this not the plot to some overblown Arthurian myth?” </p><p>“No.” Kotori said, in a dull voice. “No, it’s not. I want you to want me, not feel obligated to me because of some imagined sin. I can’t redeem you of something I don’t even know about. I don’t… get that feeling from you. I felt this… strength when I first met you. This solidness. And now… now it’s like you’re falling apart. I know...  I know how bad your head must hurt. And I’m worried how frequently it happens now. It’s like… all the pain you’re feeling, you feel like you need a reason to feel it. So you go on these.. Tangents. I know we have something special. Beyond… us. But this is… this isn’t romantic, Eli. You should talk to someone.” </p><p>The pain had become blinding, even in the dark. </p><p>“Yeah. Okay. Fuck. I’m sorry. I’ll talk to someone.” </p><p>Kotori rubbed her back. “This is good, Eli. This is exactly the right thing to do.” </p><p>“Uh huh.” </p><p>"Was there a... trigger today? I know scents do that sometimes." </p><p>Eli shook her head. "No. Just this.. new girl at work. It was weird."</p><p>Kotori shook, suddenly, and wrapped her arms around Eli's waist. “I love you, Eli. I love you so much. I love you coming home to me every night.” </p><p>“I love you too.” </p><p>They laid together, in the dark, until Eli’s pain surrendered to sleep. </p><p>
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>coca-cola actually really helps my severe headaches and now I'm jonesing for one</p></blockquote></div></div>
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